Develop Reference

How To Create Reusable Window Template/Model - WPF

Ok, I'll try to explain what I want to accomplish:
I'm quite new to WPF and XAML and I would like to create some domestic use applications with custom reusable UI. To be clear, I would like that every Window uses the same "Appearence" (specially the non-client area) without customizing every single one of them.
I've done some researches (obviously) and I found something that resembles perfectly what I'm trying to do: MahApps.Metro Template.
But I don't want to use some third party code because I like to have control all over my application and I want to customize what I want by myself. So I'd like to know what is the correct (and the best, maybe) way to do so. I've read plenty of posts about Window customizing but I didn't find anything that explained how to do that in that way.
I hope to have well-explained myself and I thank you all in advance for the help!

If you want to make custom UI in XAML you should learn to use Expression Blend. Here is a resource you can try -
Inspirational Textbox Styles (Source code available)
There are several videos available on youtube on Expression Blend for making custom UI in XAML. You can try that.

Any .NET Winforms control which look like this QT's QPushButton?

Is someone know any .NET Winform control which look like this button control?
QPushButton:
http://zetcode.com/gui/csharpqyoto/layoutmanagement/

You have several options here. You aren't specific about exactly which part of the platform you are using, but if using Winforms, you can certainly customize the buttons to some extent.
If you are using WPF, you can pretty much make it look exactly like you want in XAML. Check out Expression Blend.
As #Dimitri put it, the sky is the limit, but you may need to do the leg work.

You can create custom controls according your need and have its reference added to your project. you will have it added to your toolbox that you can use.

If you are refering to a button that is located on this example form:
We currently finishing our own application that has rather similar looking buttons. We did this by using a third party component. Steps are:
We purchased DevExpress.com's WinForms library.
We developed our own DevExpress Skin (with the help of an external screen design guy)
This was a bit of a work and some amount of money but the results look pretty neat.

How to make a custom control and component for Metro development?

I'd like to get ahead of the pack and start making some custom C# controls and components for Metro (Win8), but I can't find any documentation or blog posts on how to start, or even if it's possible right now.
Are metro controls just WPF controls? I'm not yet a WPF developer; creating a custom user control looks straightforward, but that project type doesn't exist in the Windows 8 developer preview. So, are WPF custom user controls (VS2010) the project type I should use for creating my Metro controls? Beyond that, I can't find any documentation on how to create a component for use in WPF/Metro; can you create one, or would it just be a custom user control that isn't visible? (I was hoping for some type of component container like the one winforms use; are components for Metro now only class libraries, and don't include designer support anymore?)

It's ... very difficult right now. There's no way to override OnRender or the like for a control, ie to create code to render a control with a custom appearance. However, you can create a custom template. Anything you can do in the template is legal, and that's how you have to approach custom controls.
One other option is to generate your UI using either raster (Bitmap) or vector (Windows.UI.Xaml.Shape?) components directly and build up your UI like that. Bleh.
Win8 Metro is a lot like WPF, but it isn't a subset. Similar but very different. Many WPF controls didn't make the transition to Win8 Metro; the same level of rendering control isn't available; and some system features (like advanced font rendering) aren't there. All this might change in coming releases, but right now it looks like Microsoft is trying to restrain developers from creating custom UI controls.

Customize control/ Writing Control Templates in wp7

I have been trying to customize a webbrowser control in wp7. All I need to do is to add a border property(I think it is already available in webbrowser but I have to make it mandatory when I make it as a control) and want to add a few extra event handlers and make it as a control so that it can be used later in different projects.
I tried reading through materials in msdn for writing control template and it all revolves around writing a few xaml code and attaching it with codebehind to make it work. What I don't understand is how do I learn xaml? or in other words where is the reference for all the tags that msdn talks about in xaml? Itseems to be huge and I am not sure how to go about it. The tutorial in msdn straight away divulges into xaml code and I am totally confused..
So now all I am trying to do is this,
create a control in Expression Blend (Windows Phone Control Library) that would create a class (MyCustomControl) that inherits
from CustomControl base class.
Now in xaml I am adding a webbrowser control and adding four event handlers (mouseup,down etc.,).
I build this control in blend and add the corresponding dll in VS2010.
And now once I try to add this control to my wp7 phone application it says "Cannot create an instance of MyCustomControl"..
These were further links that I referenced in creating one,
Windowsphone - Creating a custom control
Windowsphone - Control Template.
UserControl vs Custom Control
Creating a new control by creating ControlTemplate
Any further help would be great.

There is no definitive list of 'elements' you can add to your XAML. The reason for this is that the XAML parser can create any class which is a UIElement based on the XML you provide. So the elements available to you depend on the assemblies present in your project. Read teh MSDN XAML Overview for details
For a list of controls that are present by default, take a look at the System.Windows.Controls namespace (I think this link is not for your version of Silverlight, it might be best to use the Object Browser to look at the assemblies in your project).
For your problem, where you want to add a border to a WebBrowser control. I would recommend creating a UserControl as per this tutorial.

What functional differences exist between WPF and WinForms WebBrowser control?

WPF WebBrowser control looks great but knowledge accumlated over time about WinForms WebBrowser is substantial and it's hard to ignore work like csExWB. It would be nice to know what functional shortcomings or advantages exists in .NET 3.5's WPF WebBrowser control over WinForms WebBrowser control. In particular, is it possible to build csExWB-like functionality on top of WPF WebBrowser?

From one full day of frustration with wpf's component, here's what I discovered. Apparently, winforms webbrowser exposes much more methods and properties. For instance, there's no IsWebBrowserContextMenuEnabled, ActiveXInstance, etc. in wpf webbrowser.
Also, the document property of each contains different types of objects. Winform contains a document of type System.Windows.Forms.HtmlDocument with a few interesting methods and properties like PointToClient and GetElementFromPoint. Wpf webbrowser document is an Object type document that can be cast to mshtml.HtmlDocument, which only provides the same methods and properties available from a standard html + javascript document. Not very exciting. I don't know if it can be cast to something else (useful that is) since there's no real documentation about it.
The only disadvantage I could notice about winforms webbrowser is that the buttons and scrollbars inside the component don't have the same appearance as the wpf native controls.

I must admit I don't know the differences, but if you hit problems you could perhaps use WindowsFormsHost to host the winform version in WPF, like so? Ultimately, both is a wrapper around shdocvw, so principles like "pure WPF" don't really apply.